Improved weather forecasting: European satellite launch

Kourou (dpa) – The new European Metop-SGA1 weather satellite is to deliver more precise forecasts. The satellite lifted off from the European spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana on an Ariane 6 rocket during the night. Its destination is an orbit close to the Earth’s surface, some 830 kilometres above our planet. The European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed that the satellite was launched and deployed successfully. 

Prior to this, the initiator and weather satellite operator Eumetsat had described the launch as a “remarkably exciting moment”. Some parts of the spacecraft that is described as a “feat of European engineering” were built in Southern Germany.  

The Metop-SGA1 is the first satellite of a new generation of weather satellites. It carries six instruments, including METImage, which was manufactured at Airbus Defence and Space in Friedrichshafen on the shore of Lake Constance. Thanks to a considerably higher resolution, METImage is expected to deliver far more precise information, for example from cloud, water vapour and ice sheet monitoring. Among other things, the more accurate data about clouds is to be used to detect thunderclouds. Another instrument called Sentinel-5 will be used for detailed measuring of the atmospheric composition. This tool was built at the Airbus plant in Ottobrunn near Munich.